Matricide

Summary: Mankind's destruction of the Earth. This one-shot was shortlisted in the WIPS/Culture-HK imprint competition for November 2009.


Splash as I burst out, desperate. Light again. Light. Great heaving coughs- deep rasping gasps- great heaving coughs. Struggling. Hair plastered to my skull like a slimy cap, skin pasty. Drip… Splashdripdripdripdrip- Drip- A vice grabs my neck, forces my head down again-

Dunk! A blur. Flailing… but heavy, compressing. Loudly dull crashing. Thrashing, churning. Pressure in my head, pressure in my chest. Rising. RISING. Stabbing pressure. …Need air! Every instinct fighting. No, there’s no air. My mouth opens involuntarily, and frigid, filthy water rushes in. It fills me horribly, the chill crushing my lungs, my stomach.



Spluttering, gasping, the gelid, invading, fetid water filling every moment; a fight for life, against life.

And again.

An eternity is drowned.

- – - – -

His fingers are unforgiving around my jaw. The unyielding, the interminable, the vicious. Pain lashing tightly around my cheeks, I seek reprieve, eyes wide with numb fright.

His chiselled manly features (only so little time ago were they the soft boyish eyes and nose and mouth from rosy face!), still so young, so ignorant… they only look back at down me with a cruel curiosity. Oh, the brutality of time…

A ball of betrayal roils in the pits of my abdomen as my mouth is forced open by pain and kept open by his mechanical fingers. My fists clench powerlessly, arms restrained on either side by chains as biting as he.

Pungent sweetness touches my tongue, and I recoil. I close my throat and let the liquid pool. But he dispassionately pinches my nose closed and I am forced to swallow to draw breath from my mouth again.

My cheeks are bruised by the repetition of this exercise. My eyes are red and filmed over, my face puffy, my lips parched and cracked. My ears leak pus, my lower lip is paralysed, and my nose bleeds spontaneously and lengthily. My left leg is numb and shrivelled, and all my is skin chalky and flaky.

This is the daily dose he gives me.

- – - – -

This link

- – - – -

Shears flash. Tear. Midnight black strands rain to the ground. Pitifully. And the only thing I have left of my youth and health is stolen away from me.

My red eyes, puffy face, pustulent ears, cracked lips, ashen flaky face… and short, chunks of dead rotten fibres on my scalp… I can only sit, all tears spent.

But it will grow, come back. It always does. Eventually. Glossy… alive… long and luscious. Resplendent glory veiling a broken and defeated body, and raising up a broken and defeated spirit. Only to be hacked off again.

- – - – -

Lash! after Lash! Whip! Skin caught on (The snap-crack of) leather. Ripping. Scalding. Rip-tear- one, two, three lashes. Nine tails jerk gracefully, artistic lines of red in their wake.

So cold, the hand that holds it. Just keeps coming down.

And glasspaper. Scrub. Crackling scratches sounding on and on, rising from the main tune of my singing- horrified, despairing- scream.

Till blood flows freely from my back like hundreds of streams joined.

Dead flesh. Fresh, gleaming ruby.

- – - – -

Appears

- – - – -

Dull silver cuts through skin (once a moon-white glory, shining alongside my siblings, now a dead thing) with disturbing ease, sliding in smooth, disturbing lines, incising betrayal and pain along my arms, over my breasts, down my secret spot and through the paths of my legs.

Pallid, stained flesh… parts. Szip; so smooth. Like mousse.

One incision a night. One piercing shriek a night.

A deep ichor slowly seeps out, dangerous in its life. A picture emerges from crimson lines. A picture of filial treachery.

The life-fluid trickles into rivulets that transform the floor into a rufous river, sweeping my senses away into oblivion.

- – - – -

Violent slashes tear shallowly into flesh, rip into skin, leaving the deepest red in the wake of hoarse screams…

The tip of the glinting blade against my stomach. Then the skin bursts and the tip of the metal is submerged in my flesh, sending a small spurt of bright ruby spraying outward through the air and scattering into a fine mist that stings my eyes.

Limbs weak on the ground, my thirsty eyelids screw up weakly. A needle of sharp pain. Burning spreads from my abdomen.

The buried tip slits fine tissue and slides along muscle. Nicks edges and runs across hidden ridges…
-Gouge. Flesh and muscle splits. A contour created; metallic rawness and horror shoots through my body.

Eyes staring and wide with horror, yet still focused on his face, mouth agape, and brows creased, I slowly lift a shuddering hand towards the wound, sluggishly, as if afraid of something. My digits contact the flapping ridge of skin; a strange, wrong feeling floods over me immediately, though no feeling comes to my numbed abdomen.

I scream. Really scream. It has come to me that I will die; that he will kill me. My muscles seize up in a silent scream. Panicked fingers grasp in horror, digging crazily, unthinkingly. The realisation lances at my soul like the last howl of a slaughtered wolf.

With a furious plunge, as if angered by my outburst, he buries the blade completely, metal enshrouded by torn flesh, painting polished wooden walls in gore.
I feel the slimy, grisly twitches of sliced blubber and smooth tissue shifting against the instrument. Julienned muscle grips the knife in a gruesome dance of pulsating flesh. Viscous ichor bubbles up in a silent, urgent scream.

Stab; right forearm. Stab; left bicep. Stab; left calf. Stab; right breast.

It is a symphony of crying flesh.

- – - – -

TO BE

- – - – -

Body mutilated from years of abuse. Mind torn asunder. Now, nothing.

I bleed from papery gashes and cavernous gouges. Just bleed. And my soul weeps too.

Mankind, for that is his name, lights the dry branches beneath me. The limbs, as dead as I, feed a towering fire.

It roars.

It is hot.

The last of me is turned to ash. (“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”)

Why, my son? Mother Earth only ever wanted the best for you…

- – - – -

BROKEN-